Nancy first and last

by Amy Ella Blanchard

Anita shook her head. "Not I? Where did you get it, señor?"

"I thought it came from heaven, from an angel," he replied. "Did you not hear, last night under your window?"

"I heard music, if that is what you mean, but I thought it was for Miss Ralston, who has the room above ours."

"Ah, señorita, could you not discern within your heart for whom it was meant? Alas, I have been treasuring all day the hope that this was your response." He held out the flower and gave it a look which should have withered it if it had not already reached that stage. "It is worthless now," he said, with a sweeping gesture tossing the poor flower out of the window.

Not knowing exactly what response to make, Anita continued her way upstairs, saying to herself, "So it was for me after all. I wish I had stayed to the end." She did not take the matter very seriously, however, yet felt a little chagrined that she had missed the full enjoyment. She told her mother about it and they laughed over the fiasco. "It made it like one of these ridiculous situations one sometimes sees on the stage," declared Anita, "one of those mix-ups when everything goes at cross purposes. Fortunately nobody was hurt. Of course Don Manuel merely wanted to pay me a pretty attention. Very nice and polite of him."

But as the days went on, the serenade was repeated, rapturous verses appeared mysteriously under her door, fervid whispers came up to her from beneath the balcony, flowers were tossed in at the window. "I feel as if I were a mediæval princess," laughed the girl as she opened one of the missives. "You will have to help me translate this, madre; it is something about 'thinking only of thee.' I hope the Spanish cavalier will not come some night on an Arab steed and carry me off to the mountains in the moonlight."

"You don't seem to be particularly impressed," said her mother, laughing. "It seems to me that I remember a young person who ardently longed for this sort of thing, who thought no true love could be expressed in any other way."

Anita dropped the verses from her hold. "I wonder how long it usually takes for one to find out her depths of foolishness," she said. "One good, honest, true word from dear old Terry would be worth more to me than all this philandering, but that is gone, mother, gone forever, and this froth is what I have in its place. I suppose it serves me right, for I imagined froth was what I wanted because of its pretty bubbles." She tore the poem into fragments, then sat in silence by the window for a long time, looking out but seeing nothing of that which was before her. Instead arose a box-bordered path, a house with tall columns, a view of distant hills. She heard the cheerful laughter of Parthy and Ira, chuckling over some negro wit; she smelt the sweet old-fashioned roses; she listened to a voice which said: "But I do so want to make you happy. It is my dearest wish to do so." She left her seat and went over to kneel by her mother. "It has been so long," she said, "so long and I want him more than ever. Why cannot Heaven make us wise in time?"

"Ah, dear, ah, dear," her mother answered, "that is Heaven's secret. Some day we may know why. I, too, have wondered, as you are wondering now, but I believe that somewhere there is an answer."

The bells of evening rang a solemn angelus from a church near by. A sudden shaft of light shot across the room from the setting sun. Some one knocked at the door. "You are wanted at the telephone, señora," said a voice.